Leadership Team

Bill Donoghue

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Bill Donoghue

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Bill joined Skillsoft as Charterhouse Operating Partner in October 2015 and was appointed CEO in December 2015. He led a hugely ambitious and successful transformation of the company, brand, people, technology, products and culture. He has 30 years' experience in business with extensive executive experience. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Bill was Chief Operating Officer at TES Global for 5 years. At TES Global, he was instrumental in executing the companies highly acclaimed digital transformation and building its global presence into the largest network of teachers in the world, leading to the sale of the company to TPG. Prior to joining TES Global, Bill was CEO of Ramesys where he spent six years and oversaw a transformation of the company into a leading player in the UK Schools and Retail markets. Bill is a non-executive director and advisor to a number of companies in UK and the USA.

Mike Pellegrino

Chief Financial Officer

Mike Pellegrino

Chief Financial Officer

Mike was appointed Chief Financial Officer in September 2017. Prior to his appointment as CFO, Mike spent 12 years at the company in a variety of senior finance roles, most recently as Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. He also played a key role in the transformation and restructure at the company and was a member of the Leadership team who developed and executed the plan. He has vast experience of working with various capital structures including public equity and public & private debt. In addition, he has acted as the key liaison with the company's sponsors, investors and lenders. Mike began his early career at Ernst & Young. He has a BSc. in Corporate Finance from University of Massachusetts - Lowell and an MBA from the Isenberg School of Management at UMASS.

Tara O'Sullivan

Chief Creative Officer

Tara O'Sullivan

Chief Content Officer

In her role as Chief Creative Officer for Skillsoft, Tara ensures that everything we do at Skillsoft and especially our digital technology strategy, presents our brand, our voice and our vision consistently and authoritatively. Tara has extensive experience in using product marketing, branding and driving strategic growth. Tara oversees the content production business and corporate marketing. Tara has over 23 years' experience in B2B technology marketing including leadership positions in Oracle, IONA Technologies, SAS and TES Global. She has a MA in International Marketing from University College Dublin.

Mark Onisk

Chief Content Officer

Mark Onisk

Chief Content Officer

Mark is responsible for leading all aspects of the strategic direction, roadmap and development of Skillsoft’s content catalogue. Prior to his role as Chief Content Officer, Mark was SVP of Skillsoft Books (formerly Books24x7), successfully launching the Company’s book summary product and increasing the company’s audiobook collection by more than 60%, making it the largest collection of audiobooks within the corporate learning market. Today we work with more than 230 global publishers to offer over 40,000 best-selling digital and audiobook titles. Prior to Skillsoft Books, Mark led strategic business development where he worked on cross functional project and services teams to deliver integrated learning experiences with Skillsoft’s key clients. Mark began his career in Skillsoft as VP Content Production after the Element K acquisition in 2011. His career with Element K spanned 15 years, where he was responsible for the company's product strategy, content development and operational execution. Mark earned his MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and his undergraduate degree from State University of New York, College at Brockport.

Chad Gaydos

Chief Operating Officer

Chad Gaydos

Chief Operating Officer

Chad leads the Global field sales organization for Skillsoft, SumTotal and Vodeclic for the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. He has responsibility for leading sales strategy, revenue performance and customer relationships for more than 6,500 customers worldwide. Prior to Skillsoft, Chad held senior sales positions at SAP, the world's largest enterprise application software company. At SAP, Chad was the COO for SAP's Regulated Industries, where he was responsible for sales, operations, customer success and go to market strategy. Chad had been with SAP for 18 years and a member of the Executive Management team since 2007. Chad is a graduate of Kennesaw State University Finance (BBA) in Kennesaw, Georgia.

Apratim Purakayastha

Chief Technology Officer

Apratim Purakayastha (AP)

Chief Technology Officer

AP is responsible for engineering, product management, cloud operations, and IT across all products in the Skillsoft group of companies. He has extensive experience in supporting rapidly growing technology companies including General Manager and SVP of SaaS at SevOne where he was responsible for its on-demand/ SaaS business segment, after holding the position of SVP Engineering. Prior to SevOne, AP held senior technology positions including Group President in ACI Worldwide and Director of Software at IBM. AP has a PhD in Computer Science from Duke University, an MS in Computer Science from Washington State University and a BS in Computer Science from Jadavpur University, India.

Greg Porto

Chief People Officer

Greg Porto

Chief People Officer

Greg is Skillsoft's Chief People Officer, and is responsible for leading and managing our global human resources organization. Greg is focused on the continued development and evolution of our culture to enable us to attract the very best talent globally and ensure that Skillsoft is a great place to work. Greg joined Skillsoft in 2002 and has over 20 years of experience in the industry. During his tenure he has been responsible for Skillsoft's global human resources and facilities functions, and has managed a number of other administrative functions including Legal. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Greg held similar roles at CBT Systems/ SmartForce. Greg received his bachelor's degree from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut.

Heide Abelli

SVP Content Production

Heide Abelli

SVP Content Production

In her new role at Skillsoft, Heide is responsible for driving innovation and growth in the Leadership & Business Skills, Digital Skills and Compliance content portfolios. Heide has extensive experience in the publishing, media and educational technology / training sectors. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Heide spent almost a decade working at Harvard Business Publishing, where she developed award-winning e-learning products in the leadership and business skills content areas. Prior to that, she held several roles at the global media giant, Bertelsmann. Heide is passionate about leveraging technology to improve the practice of management. She has also held leadership roles in product development, innovation and product management Fortune 100 companies. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is on the faculty of the Management and Organization Department of Boston College’s School of Business.

Anthony Barbone

SVP, SumTotal Systems Sales

Anthony Barbone

SVP, SumTotal Systems Sales

Tony Barbone is responsible for leading the Sales and Consulting Lines of Business across five global regions including Presales, Channels, and our Strategic Customer Program. Tony has over 20 years’ experience in Enterprise Software Sales, most recently led the Healthcare Business Unit for SAP – one of SAP’s most strategic industry pursuits. Prior to the Healthcare leadership role, Tony held multiple sales/management roles including Strategic Account Management, Product Sales, and Business Development spanning 25+ industry verticals. Born and raised in Vancouver Canada, Tony studied Finance and Marketing at the University of British Columbia, and is a Chartered Professional Accountant.

Potoula Chresomales

SVP Product Management

Potoula Chresomales

SVP Product Management

As Senior Vice President of Product Management, Potoula is responsible for product development, innovation, and user experience design including the launch of the award-winning Percipio intelligent learning platform. Potoula leads the product organization in agile product development and lean product practices of prototype-test-iterate to ensure we are building products our customers will love. Prioir to joining Skillsoft, Potoula held leadership positions in digital product management and marketing at Kaplan Test Prep, The College Board, McGraw-Hill, and JP MorganChase. Potoula has an M.B.A from the Tuck School at Dartmouth and a B.S. from New York University.

Kevin Currier

SVP SumTotal Chief Architect

Kevin Currier

SVP SumTotal Chief Architect

As Senior Vice President of Engineering for SumTotal, Kevin is responsible for architecture, product development and training for the SumTotal product portfolio. Since joining SumTotal in 2006, Kevin has held multiple leadership positions including Chief Architect and Senior Director of Development. In these roles, Kevin had the opportunity to lead innovation initiatives across the entire suite, while launching multiple new product modules. Prior to these roles, Kevin was Director of Development at MindSolve Technologies. Kevin earned his BSBA in Computer Science and his EMBA at The University of Florida.

Joe Dawe

SVP Global Sales Operations

Joe Dawe

SVP Global Sales Operations

Joe joined Skillsoft as SVP of Global Sales Operations and has over twenty-five years of operations, technology and management experience. He has spent much of his career in customer-facing roles such as consulting and professional services as well as time building a leading global operations organization. Joe joined Skillsoft from Akamai Technologies where he has most recently led their Business Operations organization responsible for global scale. During his tenure at Akamai Joe led their Professional Services and Global Sales Operations teams. Joe holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Richmond.

Edi Feldman

SVP Cloud Ops

Edi Feldman

SVP Cloud Ops

Edi is responsible for leading the cloud operations team at Skillsoft, where he led the transformation of Skillsoft products from on premise to SaaS, helped establish the Skillsoft Security Governance Board in partnership with our Information Technology team, helped Skillsoft achieve FedRamp certification and played a key role in several of the company’s acquisitions. Edi holds an MBA from Northeastern University.

Shawn Garrett

SVP Finance

Shawn Garrett

SVP Finance

In his role as Senior Vice President of Finance, Shawn leads our global accounting, tax and treasury functions. Shawn has over 20 years of experience leading finance organizations, mainly Private Equity backed, software companies. Most recently, Shawn was the CFO at SmartBear Software, a global provider of software testing tools, where he helped lead a successful sale process. Prior to that, Shawn was VP of Finance at Aspect Software, a $500m global provider of business communication solutions and services. Shawn began his career as an auditor at Arthur Andersen, where he was a licensed CPA. He has a BA in Business Administration from Merrimack College.

Robert Hartsough

SVP Global Content Sales

Robert Hartsough

SVP Global Content Sales

Robert is responsible for leading the Sales and Consulting Lines of Business across five global regions including Specialist Line of Business, and Channels. In addition to Sales, Consulting, and Field operations, Robert is also Customer satisfaction in the Skillsoft Customer base. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Robert spent the majority of his Enterprise Software Career leading various business units for SAP America. Former positions include Chief Operating Officer South Market, National Vice President of Supply Chain Solutions, Regional Vice President of Manufacturing Solutions Sales, and Vice President of Business Intelligence Solutions. Robert has 30 years’ experience in the Enterprise Software industry and 20 years of service at SAP. Prior to joining SAP, he held various leadership and sales positions at software, consulting, and technology firms focusing on Enterprise Process Improvement. Robert earned his Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Finance and Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Kieran King

SVP Marketing

Kieran King

SVP Marketing

Kieran King is responsible for Skillsoft Group’s go-to-market (GTM) pipeline building functions including demand generation, lead generation, marketing content strategy, digital marketing, field marketing, channel marketing as well as sales and services enablement. Kieran has over 20 years of extensive experience in the human capital industry. Early in her career, Kieran managed the execution of business development and worldwide customer success plans for strategic accounts. She then went on to develop multiple methodologies and customer insight strategies that were applied across sales, operations, marketing, customer support, product and competitive functions. During that period of her career, Kieran also became a thought leader featured in white papers, conferences, influential publications and radio. In her last role, Kieran led the development of a new software sales specialty practice composed of value engineering, industry specialization, solution portfolio principals and sales enablement. Kieran graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from the University of Delaware.

Jeff Lyons

SVP Global Professional Services

Jeff Lyons

SVP Global Professional Services

Jeff has over 20 years of software industry experience, having held leadership roles in every business function: development, sales, services, and support. Prior to his current role, Jeff was Chief of Staff for SumTotal, where he led the integration of four acquired business and drove key, cross-functional change initiatives and strategic projects as SumTotal transformed itself into the largest independent provider of integrated HCM solutions. This transition more than doubled revenue and drove tremendous efficiencies, increasing profitability almost ten-fold, and led to the strategic acquisition of SumTotal by Skillsoft. Prior to joining SumTotal, Jeff was co-founder and Chief Client Officer of MindSolve Technologies, a pioneer in employee performance management software based in Gainesville, FL. As Chief Client Officer, Jeff was responsible for all customer-facing operations: sales, services, and support. Jeff holds a Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA from the University of Florida.

Snehanshu Shah

SVP Value & Solutions Practice

Snehanshu Shah

SVP Value & Solutions Practice

Shah is SVP Value & Solutions Practice for Skillsoft Group. His team consists of industry, value and solutions experts who are responsible for accelerating sales cycles and building demand. Shah comes to us from SAP where he spent the last 12 years in a variety of senior leadership positions spanning diverse go-to-market, customer adoption, industry, business architecture and data science teams. During his tenure at SAP, he also helped create a design-thinking-focused sales methodology that led to some of SAP's largest platform customer successes. Shah has over 25 years' experience in the Enterprise Software industry and 12 years of service at SAP. Prior to SAP, Shah held product management and engineering leadership positions at Oracle, KLA-Tencor, Motorola and MCC, and founded multiple analytics start-ups early in his career. Shah has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Ed Zaval

SVP Customer Support

Ed Zaval

SVP Customer Support

In his role as SVP Customer Support, Ed leads SumTotal’s product support and cloud delivery, overseeing overall service quality, incident response and resolution, as well as customer satisfaction. Ed is a career-long service professional and customer advocate, most recently serving as SVP Global Services at SevOne where he was responsible for 24x7 global support delivery of 13,000 customer tickets per year across SevOne’s installed base of enterprise and service provider customers, delivering subscription and SaaS based products to their end users. Previously, he held long term senior global Service and Support leadership roles at Coriant and Sycamore Networks, suppliers of Service Provider networking solutions. He has spent 20 years leading high-growth and large-scale worldwide service organizations, driving operational efficiency, and supporting extensive and complex customer implementations across the enterprise, service provider and government markets. Ed holds a BSEE degree from University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.